The meaning of "Freedom"

A good companion piece to Jazz's excellent post The Two Faces of Freedom below is Steve Soto's post on George Lakoff's decoding of Bush's inaugural speech.

In Bush's parlance, "freedom" has been recast largely as "economic freedom," a political shift that could damage liberals already searching for a cohesive message, analysts said.
[......]
In Lakoff's decoding of Thursday's address, "freedom" meant "unfettered economic markets." Same goes for phrases such as "ownership society" and "the governing of the self." They're conservative shorthand for believing that the government should not be regulating business. "Conservatives have been masterful at this, but they've been working on it for 35 years, while progressives have just been standing by," Lakoff said.

This is of course the feudalistic Social Darwinism of Grover Norquist at work. Freedom is the freedom to acquire all the the power and wealth you can without interference from the government. The pie is not nearly big enough for everyone to have a piece to only the most ruthless will survive. This ties in nicely with the Fundementalist Christian's Calvinist vision of life, if you are poor it's because you are less deserving. I suggest you head over to The Left Coaster and read Steve's entire post.